At 11 p.m. the man checking names at the door of the Village Vanguard, the New York City jazz club where Miles played, where Monk played, says Jesus hasn’t arrived but his plane “is touching down even as we speak.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that the introduction of bag searches—even though it’s random, even though it’s not 100 percent—dramatically improves the security posture of this huge, sprawling subway system, which I believe is a top-tier target of Al Qaeda right now, even as we speak,” said the police official, Michael A. Sheehan.